It's really quite simple; if someone commits a crime, breaks a traffic law, etc they need to provide ID or they get their info run to see if they're legal....I don't see anything in there about Mexicans, do you?
Of course it doesn't say anything about Mexicans. That would be stupid, regardless of any intentions involved. You really think if they wrote a law like this with racist intentions they would state that explicitly? I'm not saying this is or isn't the case, but your proof is like asking people to play dumb.
Also your interpretation of the law doesn't match what I read in your link, nor does is coincide with what backers of the bill have said. The law states that they need "reasonable suspicion" and "lawful contact" to verify citizenship. Reasonable suspicion does not equal probable cause and neither does lawful contact. There is nothing in the law that establishes what reasonable suspicion is, and when asked what reasonable suspicion was, even the lawmakers who backed the bill can't come up with anything consistent. The only simple thing about the law is that it is open ended and poorly defined.
Another thing to note is your example is a bit ironic. Did you actually verify that the people in the emergency room weren't citizens? It's the emergency room where things aren't exactly planned out. Maybe they didn't have time to look for their paper work or it was lost in an accident. I carry around my drivers license but it might be in my coat on the table when I leave the office to get coffee. If I was rushed to the ER without it and was in their position would you have assumed I wasn't a citizen? Would the question be easier to answer if you could see what I looked like, or how I talked?
Unfortunately most of the streaming porn that people watch on their browsers is in Flash. The same problem exists with streaming sites that play for foreign dramas. Even if HTML5 really catches on it will generally be for mainstream content. The iTunes thing is kind of a pain. Downloaded videos are rarely in a format that iTunes will recognize. You have to convert your whole library to their format which is time consuming. Porn is more of a spontaneous activity. If your not in the mood to watch it immediately you aren't going to be in the mood to convert your porn files to an iPad friendly format.
I can't say he did or he didn't. The stuff you mentioned doesn't say much.
You can go to a straight porn website and get malware that serves gay porn popups etc. In fact plenty of straight porn sites have ads, links or redirects that will send plently of gay porn your way if you aren't protected and have bad browsing habits. Also bombarding someones computer with gay porn popups and viruses is one of the oldest gags in the book. Even the movie player can be installed without his knowledge or from an entirely different category of porn. Point being the type of content that his computer was infected with isn't necessarily going to match the content he was browsing. Anyways, I'm sure you had some better evidence to come to this conclusion but you haven't presented it.
It's not really an inability, it's a policy that marketing often enforces that customers should be able to tell what the product does by the name. Most of the products start with something closer to what their code names are and the product group is told by marketing or user assistance to change it. The policy creates both lame names and unnecessarily long names as they are also often required to including the name of parent product or feature.
Great post, technically correct, but totally ignoring the elephant in the room.
Yes, "equal opportunity" is what you say. "Affirmative action", however, is exactly what you say "equal opportunity" is not.
Both are law. So your whole diatribe basically makes one point : "you're misidentifying the law you're complaining about". Of course, you're acting as if this little mistake invalidates the whole argument.
That's just not how you present your argument : it's a direct attack against complaining about the obvious stupidity of this law. In other words, you agree with affirmative action, with racist quotas (oh sorry I meant "racial" quotas, which means the same thing), and you somehow feel the need to attack anyone disagreeing with you with tiny little details.
Your argument is as idiotic as saying "watr" isn't wet, due to misspelling.
It's an important point. He described a law that you strongly feel is racist and you think it's okay to mix up such a negative argument with the wrong law because what? The two laws are as similar as "water" and "watr?" It wasn't a simple error and such misinformation can easily spread ignorance which is more likely why this error occurred in the first place. Hence, he probably heard it from somewhere else and continues to spread it. Problem is most people talking about affirmative action don't even know what that law is. Now you have people confusing it with other laws and giving them the same negative connotations. Don't assume that's always an accident either.
Find someplace where the company culture includes a work ethic because productivity means profit and profit means paychecks.
Not really. It's quite the opposite. Programmers have figured out that the most profitable software companies have lax work ethic and they get good paychecks there. I think you are making the mistake of equating work ethic with productivity in relation to profits.
Frankly, ten years from now, game developers will probably wonder whether it's worth the trouble anymore translating their games for the US market.
I don't think the question is whether it's worth the trouble. It think the question is can these companies make good games with these lame sets of rules, and will those games appeal to Chinese gamers. If that does not happen it will not matter how big their market is. Another issue to consider is how will the rules change in the future. The Chinese government is very aggressive at combating excessive gaming. Don't put it past them to decide that video games in general do not fit their socialist values. They have already done just that with other types of digital media.
If you say your buying habits are probably not the norm and that you might be cheap, and the product is only "a little" high to be deemed and impulse buy type item, then the item is probably an impulse buy type item based on your own suggestions. In addition, you generally wouldn't convert the price of something in £s to US dollars to see how much it would cost in the US. It doesn't work that way. The cost is actually differs a lot by region. You would be looking at closer to $50 ot $60, the price of a game.
I'm currently using Chrome but AdBlock is a big deal. Until I switched to Chrome I had no idea that some of the websites I used had so many full page ads that required you to wait a few seconds then click close before you view the content. It's not a matter of there being a few ads, its a matter of going to a news website where there is literally a dozen animated ads. There is a big difference here in the user experience. I have even noticed that the performance boost you get from Chrome is often negated by the lack of AdBlock.
The ironic thing about this story is their website provides a seamless experience for the user by mimicking the behavior of PC crapware on their website.
I appreciate the sentiment of the article and many of the other like minded articles on the internet. Now if only those content providers would look to their own products (their website) and rid them of at least some of the crap that they bundle with their products. All the obtrusive advertising, animations, and especially the full page or layered adds are just as bad in almost every way that the crapware installed by PC OEMs is. And likewise, there are tools for removing or blocking this garbage, a process which degrades the user experience. In addition, the excuse is the same, the product wouldn't be possible or free without ads. Fine but have some restraint. The homepage alone has at least 6 animated adds and the entire background is a Dell add.
I live in Washington State and I don't care. But aside from anecdotal evidence, it would be completely out of character for most Washington state residents to care. Most of them would figure that MS is bringing that potential tax revenue back to the state in other ways. In contrast to Boeing, their rep locally is pretty good. In addition it wouldn't be surprising if the state changed the law to allow the company to continue, and most people here wouldn't say a damn thing about it. It happens here all the time, and many people support it because the state is often seen as not having a very attractive business climate.
Right now there are 100's of phones on the market, all running some sort of OS. Each of them appeal to different audiences, with different features, reliability, and carrier compatability.
The OEMs that support Android will continue to support the other OS's so this might compound that problem for average consumers.
Essentially, some of those 100's of current models are being replaced with models running Android. Android is an operating system, it does not define the device it runs upon. Just like I can run Linux using just a tty interface over a serial link, or I can run it with a 3d desktop across multiple screens; Android can be similarly used for different phones.
Yes and part of the problem are the devices that Android runs on. Another problem is the branding. If Android is just an OS it will not have the branding and luxury power of the IPhone. This may not matter to me but it will affect sales. This is great, but it is also a weakness when competing with a complete package like BB or IPhone.
The advantages of Android over existing phone OS's are threefold: 1. cost... there is no cost to the manufacturer of the phone or the carrier.
This is a benefit has not and probably will not be received by the consumer.
2. compatibility... applications for Android will be compatable with other manufacturers Android handsets,
Same thing with WinMo. But that doesn't really matter if you find Apple, Blackberry, or Nokia hardware more attractive.
so different manufacturers will compete on quality of their product rather than the amount of software available.
I don't see any indication that this is true. I wish it were true, that's the only reason it sounds good.
3. features... Android was developed to be very feature rich, of course manufacturers can disable features but if they want them it is trivial to enable them. If the public begins to demand additional features as ideas change, then Android can be upgraded to include those features.
Manufactures can and do enable disable features on WinMo easily. The problem is the driving forces behind this comes down to money. What the consumer wants is not always more profitable. Now giving this power to the consumer, in a user friendly manner would be a real benefit.
Essentially, there were no phone OS's that manufacturers could even purchase that would result in a product so refined that it could compete with Apple and Blackberry, and neither of them were licensing their code. Android changes that.
True, but the OEMs are running Android on hardware that isn't as refined and their OS customizations (ex HTC Home screens Today screens) drastically degrade performance.
I think what people are failing to see is that Android has the same problems that WinMo and Symbian based OSs have. One is branding, the other is the hardware. The fact is there will always be a large portion of people who prefer an Apple or RIM device over and HTC or Samsung one, and it won't matter what features are involved. Many consumers, not the ones here, but ones that aren't as tech savvy are going to identify more with the hardware than the OS. In that case they often won't care or know which of the 3 OS's come on their new Samsung smartphone. Another thing you are forgetting is that the OEMs that make Android devices are the same ones iPhone and BB users are not satisfied with. Android will come with whatever weaknesses Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG etc introduce via hardware and even their own OEM OS customizations. I'm an Android user myself. The platform is great, but I think people are missing the marketing power of a complete package that has luxury appeal, and these are benefits that Android does not have.
Then you usually find out that the interface is awkward, viewing the screen is uncomfortable, holding them is strange, and typing on a real keyboard is 100 times faster than trying to "write" or touch virtual keys one at a time.
The problem is most people don't know where or when to use slate tablets despite the fact that there are plenty of situations where they do excel and because of that they often compromise by using a Smartphone in those situations or just waiting until they get stationary. If you are comparing them to a notebook then that is probably the first mistake. If you are at a table or a desk you probably don't need a slate tablet. However if you are standing, walking or in a situation where you need to hold your pc with one hand, then using a notebook is not only awkward, strange, and uncomfortable, but it's dangerous. Basically tablets allow you to use a full pc in situations where you can't easily use a notebook. It's not a rare situation because smartphones attempt to do the same thing, and as much as people love their capabilities, smartphones just don't work for many types of applications. Consequently many smartphones have been moving in the direction of a slate tablet. It's almost as if they are working backwards towards a technology we already had.
Apple surprised people by putting the price to upgrade to Snow Leopard at a very attractive $29 for a single license, and $49 for a five-user family pack. But there's a catch: you have to already have Leopard installed to pay those prices. If you're upgrading from a previous version of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), you'll have to pay $169, which includes an upgrade to 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). For a 5-user family pack license, it'll cost $229. And Snow Leopard is only compatible with Macs containing Intel chips. On the OS front, Leopard is the end of the line for PowerPC Mac owners.
The Japanese aren't brand-motivated. They are quality-motivated.
Then why was there such a long line when they opened Forever21 in Tokyo?
Also look at computers. Sony Vaio has a much better rep there, and that is not about quality.
Have you ever been to a bathroom in Tokyo? Not at a nice restaurant or Hotel, but an average place. Even my apartment that had a washlet (separate room) had the crappiest little bathroom. It resembled and RV bathroom - a big molded piece of plastic, the sink and shower share the same hose etc. Almost every apt I went to seemed to have the same type of bathroom. The washers and dryers there were also horrible. Most of the average priced dryers would steem dry your close and it would take about 4hrs.
I could go on but when I lived there consumers really weren't any more informed or concerned about quality than anyone else. They just had a different set of products that you could call cheap. But when it comes to brand motivation, Tokyo is probably the biggest display of brand worship you will ever see.
I wouldn't call it a troll just somewhat uniformed as SMS MMS isn't what they usually use in Japan, its an email based protocol. Some phones such as many Softbank phones come with SMS MMS but that's mostly for international use and the default messaging protocol is a form of push email. Tons of phones released in Japan do not have SMS MMS. Their largest carrier Docomo didn't have any for a long time until and when they did it was for their line international phone. SMS MMS is not an issue there.
You haven't crunched any numbers. You haven't actually calculated any of this in regards to the tax rate you posted. You just displayed some random cost of living expenses and assumed the big numbers offset the large difference in national income tax. Consider that tax scales with income and those cost of living expenses do not and you don't have much of an argument, at least not with the evidence you provided. The 400k number for education is nonsense by the way. It may exist in some extreme cases by it is not useful for these purposes.
Nobody likes to pay more taxes, but comparing tax rates directly without taking into account everything else is pure fiction.
No it isn't fiction. Taxes are mandatory. Some of the stuff you named is important but is not mandatory. What you are really talking about is what is done with the tax money. Of course if you pay higher taxes, you will get more services. But with lower taxes you have the option of not paying for certain services if you don't want them. I'm not saying it's a better method, but there is value in that as well. You also have a better source for making investments.
Also some of your numbers are way off. For example, your university figure appears to be for private out of state universities. In contrast there are many good public in state universities and the tuition is significantly cheaper because of taxes (often nowhere near 50k). In addition, there are good private in state universities that don't fit that rate either.
Actually most Japanese would also view this as a drastic response but with a little more contempt for the person who killed themselves than Americans are used to because it disrupts their lives. It's considered a desperate and inconsiderate act, especially for someone who isn't even a well known public figure, (the rare case where honor might even be considered and even then it's mostly only going to be a few right wing lunatics that cheer for you). The motivation is now more of a frowned upon social problem as opposed to some valiant effort to maintain honor that everyone accepts. If you want to consider modern Japanese culture then the extreme pressures of society and the workplace are the motivation.
You can help: by keeping out of it.....Do you think the Swiss--a much older democracy--are doing so? I doubt it. They are probably shaking their heads and saying, "Yes, it was like that here in 1500, but we got over it and so will they.
From TFA:
"Supported 720p HD video files play on the device, downscaled to fit the screen at 480 x 272 - not HD resolution. Zune HD and AV Dock, and an HDTV (all sold separately) are required to view video at HD resolution"
The point of the HD support is to play the video on an external HDTV, not to improve the experience playing videos on the devices built in screen. So yes, 720 is supported in the same way it's supported on the X-Box and Applet TV, except this device comes in to play in additional scenarios.
It also wouldn't be so far fetched to assume that he was just trying instill some confidence amongst the investors. Internally there is benefit to recognizing Linux, but it may not be something he wants investors loosing sleep over.
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It's really quite simple; if someone commits a crime, breaks a traffic law, etc they need to provide ID or they get their info run to see if they're legal....I don't see anything in there about Mexicans, do you?
Of course it doesn't say anything about Mexicans. That would be stupid, regardless of any intentions involved. You really think if they wrote a law like this with racist intentions they would state that explicitly? I'm not saying this is or isn't the case, but your proof is like asking people to play dumb.
Also your interpretation of the law doesn't match what I read in your link, nor does is coincide with what backers of the bill have said. The law states that they need "reasonable suspicion" and "lawful contact" to verify citizenship. Reasonable suspicion does not equal probable cause and neither does lawful contact. There is nothing in the law that establishes what reasonable suspicion is, and when asked what reasonable suspicion was, even the lawmakers who backed the bill can't come up with anything consistent. The only simple thing about the law is that it is open ended and poorly defined.
Another thing to note is your example is a bit ironic. Did you actually verify that the people in the emergency room weren't citizens? It's the emergency room where things aren't exactly planned out. Maybe they didn't have time to look for their paper work or it was lost in an accident. I carry around my drivers license but it might be in my coat on the table when I leave the office to get coffee. If I was rushed to the ER without it and was in their position would you have assumed I wasn't a citizen? Would the question be easier to answer if you could see what I looked like, or how I talked?
Unfortunately most of the streaming porn that people watch on their browsers is in Flash. The same problem exists with streaming sites that play for foreign dramas. Even if HTML5 really catches on it will generally be for mainstream content. The iTunes thing is kind of a pain. Downloaded videos are rarely in a format that iTunes will recognize. You have to convert your whole library to their format which is time consuming. Porn is more of a spontaneous activity. If your not in the mood to watch it immediately you aren't going to be in the mood to convert your porn files to an iPad friendly format.
I can't say he did or he didn't. The stuff you mentioned doesn't say much. You can go to a straight porn website and get malware that serves gay porn popups etc. In fact plenty of straight porn sites have ads, links or redirects that will send plently of gay porn your way if you aren't protected and have bad browsing habits. Also bombarding someones computer with gay porn popups and viruses is one of the oldest gags in the book. Even the movie player can be installed without his knowledge or from an entirely different category of porn. Point being the type of content that his computer was infected with isn't necessarily going to match the content he was browsing. Anyways, I'm sure you had some better evidence to come to this conclusion but you haven't presented it.
It's not really an inability, it's a policy that marketing often enforces that customers should be able to tell what the product does by the name. Most of the products start with something closer to what their code names are and the product group is told by marketing or user assistance to change it. The policy creates both lame names and unnecessarily long names as they are also often required to including the name of parent product or feature.
Great post, technically correct, but totally ignoring the elephant in the room.
Yes, "equal opportunity" is what you say. "Affirmative action", however, is exactly what you say "equal opportunity" is not.
Both are law. So your whole diatribe basically makes one point : "you're misidentifying the law you're complaining about". Of course, you're acting as if this little mistake invalidates the whole argument.
That's just not how you present your argument : it's a direct attack against complaining about the obvious stupidity of this law. In other words, you agree with affirmative action, with racist quotas (oh sorry I meant "racial" quotas, which means the same thing), and you somehow feel the need to attack anyone disagreeing with you with tiny little details.
Your argument is as idiotic as saying "watr" isn't wet, due to misspelling.
It's an important point. He described a law that you strongly feel is racist and you think it's okay to mix up such a negative argument with the wrong law because what? The two laws are as similar as "water" and "watr?" It wasn't a simple error and such misinformation can easily spread ignorance which is more likely why this error occurred in the first place. Hence, he probably heard it from somewhere else and continues to spread it. Problem is most people talking about affirmative action don't even know what that law is. Now you have people confusing it with other laws and giving them the same negative connotations. Don't assume that's always an accident either.
Find someplace where the company culture includes a work ethic because productivity means profit and profit means paychecks.
Not really. It's quite the opposite. Programmers have figured out that the most profitable software companies have lax work ethic and they get good paychecks there. I think you are making the mistake of equating work ethic with productivity in relation to profits.
Frankly, ten years from now, game developers will probably wonder whether it's worth the trouble anymore translating their games for the US market.
I don't think the question is whether it's worth the trouble. It think the question is can these companies make good games with these lame sets of rules, and will those games appeal to Chinese gamers. If that does not happen it will not matter how big their market is. Another issue to consider is how will the rules change in the future. The Chinese government is very aggressive at combating excessive gaming. Don't put it past them to decide that video games in general do not fit their socialist values. They have already done just that with other types of digital media.
If you say your buying habits are probably not the norm and that you might be cheap, and the product is only "a little" high to be deemed and impulse buy type item, then the item is probably an impulse buy type item based on your own suggestions. In addition, you generally wouldn't convert the price of something in £s to US dollars to see how much it would cost in the US. It doesn't work that way. The cost is actually differs a lot by region. You would be looking at closer to $50 ot $60, the price of a game.
I'm currently using Chrome but AdBlock is a big deal. Until I switched to Chrome I had no idea that some of the websites I used had so many full page ads that required you to wait a few seconds then click close before you view the content. It's not a matter of there being a few ads, its a matter of going to a news website where there is literally a dozen animated ads. There is a big difference here in the user experience. I have even noticed that the performance boost you get from Chrome is often negated by the lack of AdBlock.
The ironic thing about this story is their website provides a seamless experience for the user by mimicking the behavior of PC crapware on their website. I appreciate the sentiment of the article and many of the other like minded articles on the internet. Now if only those content providers would look to their own products (their website) and rid them of at least some of the crap that they bundle with their products. All the obtrusive advertising, animations, and especially the full page or layered adds are just as bad in almost every way that the crapware installed by PC OEMs is. And likewise, there are tools for removing or blocking this garbage, a process which degrades the user experience. In addition, the excuse is the same, the product wouldn't be possible or free without ads. Fine but have some restraint. The homepage alone has at least 6 animated adds and the entire background is a Dell add.
I live in Washington State and I don't care. But aside from anecdotal evidence, it would be completely out of character for most Washington state residents to care. Most of them would figure that MS is bringing that potential tax revenue back to the state in other ways. In contrast to Boeing, their rep locally is pretty good. In addition it wouldn't be surprising if the state changed the law to allow the company to continue, and most people here wouldn't say a damn thing about it. It happens here all the time, and many people support it because the state is often seen as not having a very attractive business climate.
Right now there are 100's of phones on the market, all running some sort of OS. Each of them appeal to different audiences, with different features, reliability, and carrier compatability.
The OEMs that support Android will continue to support the other OS's so this might compound that problem for average consumers.
Essentially, some of those 100's of current models are being replaced with models running Android. Android is an operating system, it does not define the device it runs upon. Just like I can run Linux using just a tty interface over a serial link, or I can run it with a 3d desktop across multiple screens; Android can be similarly used for different phones.
Yes and part of the problem are the devices that Android runs on. Another problem is the branding. If Android is just an OS it will not have the branding and luxury power of the IPhone. This may not matter to me but it will affect sales. This is great, but it is also a weakness when competing with a complete package like BB or IPhone.
The advantages of Android over existing phone OS's are threefold: 1. cost... there is no cost to the manufacturer of the phone or the carrier.
This is a benefit has not and probably will not be received by the consumer.
2. compatibility... applications for Android will be compatable with other manufacturers Android handsets,
Same thing with WinMo. But that doesn't really matter if you find Apple, Blackberry, or Nokia hardware more attractive.
so different manufacturers will compete on quality of their product rather than the amount of software available.
I don't see any indication that this is true. I wish it were true, that's the only reason it sounds good.
3. features... Android was developed to be very feature rich, of course manufacturers can disable features but if they want them it is trivial to enable them. If the public begins to demand additional features as ideas change, then Android can be upgraded to include those features.
Manufactures can and do enable disable features on WinMo easily. The problem is the driving forces behind this comes down to money. What the consumer wants is not always more profitable. Now giving this power to the consumer, in a user friendly manner would be a real benefit.
Essentially, there were no phone OS's that manufacturers could even purchase that would result in a product so refined that it could compete with Apple and Blackberry, and neither of them were licensing their code. Android changes that.
True, but the OEMs are running Android on hardware that isn't as refined and their OS customizations (ex HTC Home screens Today screens) drastically degrade performance. I think what people are failing to see is that Android has the same problems that WinMo and Symbian based OSs have. One is branding, the other is the hardware. The fact is there will always be a large portion of people who prefer an Apple or RIM device over and HTC or Samsung one, and it won't matter what features are involved. Many consumers, not the ones here, but ones that aren't as tech savvy are going to identify more with the hardware than the OS. In that case they often won't care or know which of the 3 OS's come on their new Samsung smartphone. Another thing you are forgetting is that the OEMs that make Android devices are the same ones iPhone and BB users are not satisfied with. Android will come with whatever weaknesses Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG etc introduce via hardware and even their own OEM OS customizations. I'm an Android user myself. The platform is great, but I think people are missing the marketing power of a complete package that has luxury appeal, and these are benefits that Android does not have.
Then you usually find out that the interface is awkward, viewing the screen is uncomfortable, holding them is strange, and typing on a real keyboard is 100 times faster than trying to "write" or touch virtual keys one at a time.
The problem is most people don't know where or when to use slate tablets despite the fact that there are plenty of situations where they do excel and because of that they often compromise by using a Smartphone in those situations or just waiting until they get stationary. If you are comparing them to a notebook then that is probably the first mistake. If you are at a table or a desk you probably don't need a slate tablet. However if you are standing, walking or in a situation where you need to hold your pc with one hand, then using a notebook is not only awkward, strange, and uncomfortable, but it's dangerous. Basically tablets allow you to use a full pc in situations where you can't easily use a notebook. It's not a rare situation because smartphones attempt to do the same thing, and as much as people love their capabilities, smartphones just don't work for many types of applications. Consequently many smartphones have been moving in the direction of a slate tablet. It's almost as if they are working backwards towards a technology we already had.
Apple surprised people by putting the price to upgrade to Snow Leopard at a very attractive $29 for a single license, and $49 for a five-user family pack. But there's a catch: you have to already have Leopard installed to pay those prices. If you're upgrading from a previous version of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), you'll have to pay $169, which includes an upgrade to 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). For a 5-user family pack license, it'll cost $229. And Snow Leopard is only compatible with Macs containing Intel chips. On the OS front, Leopard is the end of the line for PowerPC Mac owners.
The Japanese aren't brand-motivated. They are quality-motivated.
Then why was there such a long line when they opened Forever21 in Tokyo?
Also look at computers. Sony Vaio has a much better rep there, and that is not about quality.
Have you ever been to a bathroom in Tokyo? Not at a nice restaurant or Hotel, but an average place. Even my apartment that had a washlet (separate room) had the crappiest little bathroom. It resembled and RV bathroom - a big molded piece of plastic, the sink and shower share the same hose etc. Almost every apt I went to seemed to have the same type of bathroom. The washers and dryers there were also horrible. Most of the average priced dryers would steem dry your close and it would take about 4hrs.
I could go on but when I lived there consumers really weren't any more informed or concerned about quality than anyone else. They just had a different set of products that you could call cheap. But when it comes to brand motivation, Tokyo is probably the biggest display of brand worship you will ever see.
I wouldn't call it a troll just somewhat uniformed as SMS MMS isn't what they usually use in Japan, its an email based protocol. Some phones such as many Softbank phones come with SMS MMS but that's mostly for international use and the default messaging protocol is a form of push email. Tons of phones released in Japan do not have SMS MMS. Their largest carrier Docomo didn't have any for a long time until and when they did it was for their line international phone. SMS MMS is not an issue there.
You haven't crunched any numbers. You haven't actually calculated any of this in regards to the tax rate you posted. You just displayed some random cost of living expenses and assumed the big numbers offset the large difference in national income tax. Consider that tax scales with income and those cost of living expenses do not and you don't have much of an argument, at least not with the evidence you provided. The 400k number for education is nonsense by the way. It may exist in some extreme cases by it is not useful for these purposes.
No it isn't fiction. Taxes are mandatory. Some of the stuff you named is important but is not mandatory. What you are really talking about is what is done with the tax money. Of course if you pay higher taxes, you will get more services. But with lower taxes you have the option of not paying for certain services if you don't want them. I'm not saying it's a better method, but there is value in that as well. You also have a better source for making investments.
Also some of your numbers are way off. For example, your university figure appears to be for private out of state universities. In contrast there are many good public in state universities and the tuition is significantly cheaper because of taxes (often nowhere near 50k). In addition, there are good private in state universities that don't fit that rate either.
Actually most Japanese would also view this as a drastic response but with a little more contempt for the person who killed themselves than Americans are used to because it disrupts their lives. It's considered a desperate and inconsiderate act, especially for someone who isn't even a well known public figure, (the rare case where honor might even be considered and even then it's mostly only going to be a few right wing lunatics that cheer for you). The motivation is now more of a frowned upon social problem as opposed to some valiant effort to maintain honor that everyone accepts. If you want to consider modern Japanese culture then the extreme pressures of society and the workplace are the motivation.
Despite the rising excitement over SSDs, some of it has been tempered by performance degradation issues.
Who cares how they perform. All they have to do is sit there and scare away enemy fleets.
I think the idea is to have robots kill people...
Impossible. Robots don't kill people. People kill people.... I've been waiting to say that for a long time so just forget I was here.
You can help: by keeping out of it.....Do you think the Swiss--a much older democracy--are doing so? I doubt it. They are probably shaking their heads and saying, "Yes, it was like that here in 1500, but we got over it and so will they.
I'm sure the Swiss don't all think alike.
From TFA: "Supported 720p HD video files play on the device, downscaled to fit the screen at 480 x 272 - not HD resolution. Zune HD and AV Dock, and an HDTV (all sold separately) are required to view video at HD resolution"
The point of the HD support is to play the video on an external HDTV, not to improve the experience playing videos on the devices built in screen. So yes, 720 is supported in the same way it's supported on the X-Box and Applet TV, except this device comes in to play in additional scenarios.
Judging by the Zune store integration, I would say people who bought an X-box. Not just the old and confused ones.
This just goes to show how backwards we are in the States. They already solved this problem is Japan. - Stop having babies.
It also wouldn't be so far fetched to assume that he was just trying instill some confidence amongst the investors. Internally there is benefit to recognizing Linux, but it may not be something he wants investors loosing sleep over.